


in love with you, again

by mochibbh



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Baking, Exes, M/M, hints of johnjae tenkun and johndo if u rly look, jisung jaehyun sicheng taeil mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22507744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mochibbh/pseuds/mochibbh
Summary: “It’s just—I feel bad for you.”Doyoung is taken aback with confusion. “Why?” he asks.The affection in Yuta’s eyes don’t let up. “You’ll never get to see how beautiful you are when you laugh.”🍵🍵🍵The last time Doyoung heard his voice was six years ago, on the night Yuta broke his heart over the phone.Suffering through baking classes with him now seems easy compared to that.
Relationships: Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Nakamoto Yuta
Comments: 35
Kudos: 292





	in love with you, again

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 25: Doyoung and Yuta are exes who haven't seen each other for years. When they both sign up for cooking lessons and get paired with each other, things get AWKWARD, but maybe old feelings are starting to resurface...
> 
> 🍵🍵🍵
> 
> sry i changed cooking to baking also sry this took so long to get up, but i'm glad it can go up on time for dy's bday !!  
> this is a bit shorter and a bit diff than my other fics, but i hope you like it! i'll leave my socials at the end in the notes section.  
> disclaimer i dont bake im awful at it sry lol
> 
> originally written for Doyu Fest 2020!
> 
> heavy inspiration and title taken from dodie's [arms unfolding.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aW8ZN43UMA)
> 
> 🍵🍵🍵
> 
>   
> _"oh partner in crime, i'm going to try_  
>  _to fall in love with you, again"_  
> 

As soon as the man at the baking station in front of him turns around to introduce himself, Doyoung immediately stands to leave.

Doyoung doesn’t consider himself an irrational person. Snappy, maybe. Emotional, definitely, but not irrational. Even when his heart tries to speak over his head, in the end it’s always his head that makes his decisions.

Now, though, there’s no room in Doyoung anywhere to rationalize, so he’s putting one foot in front of the other towards the exit before his head has anything to say about it. A hand on his upper has him stopping prematurely. Doyoung doesn’t want to make a bigger scene than he already has, so he halts in his tracks.

“Wait, Doyoung,” he hears the man say. Doyoung tastes bile in the back of his throat at the voice, at the mention of his name on his tongue. “It’s—I can leave, you should stay.”

Doyoung pointedly has his head turned to the side so he doesn’t see his face, but he takes a quick glance around the room to see if there’s anyone else here without a partner, but it’s just the two of them. Everyone else has already partnered up together, leaving Doyoung here with—

He swallows roughly and clenches his jaw. “What are you doing here?” he asks, exasperated. “Did you know I would be here?”

“No, I just… I wanted to try something new. You know, new year or whatever,” the other explains. “I didn’t know you’d be here, I swear. I wasn’t even sure if you were still in America or not.” He chews on his bottom lip, and Doyoung raises an eyebrow. _He’s nervous,_ Doyoung muses.

Doyoung weighs his options; he either stays here and unavoidably suffers, or he skips out on the month-long Christmas gift that Taeyong so thoughtfully got for him.

_Taeyong._

“Does Taeyong know you’re here?” he asks. The other shakes his head no. “I meant here, in Korea,” Doyoung clarifies.

“…No.” The man’s eyes drift somewhere over Doyoung’s shoulder and he sucks on the inside of his cheek.

He’s lying. Doyoung still knows all of Yuta’s tells.

He rolls his eyes, knowing he’s going to argue with Taeyong about it later. For now, he pushes it to the back of his head and focuses on Yuta in front of him, letting out a long sigh through his nose. “Just stay,” he settles on. Yuta’s eyes widen in surprise while Doyoung shakes his arm out of Yuta’s grasp. “We need partners for the lesson, and you’re the only one left. It’s fine,” he lies through his teeth, turning back to the counter in front of him and pretending the measuring cups are more interesting than Yuta’s entire existence.

Yuta opens his mouth to respond, but the instructor in the front announces that the time for self-introductions is over and that they’ll be starting the lesson. The rest of the room quiets down to listen to the instructions coming from the front. Doyoung listens attentively enough and stands at least a foot away from Yuta the whole time.

Today’s class is cookies. It’s simple enough, something that Doyoung has done before a couple of times, so he listens half-heartedly. Maybe it’ll be easy enough for Yuta and Doyoung to finish swiftly without interacting. He can only hope.

Once the instructor is done explaining the instructions written on the whiteboard, Yuta turns to Doyoung and says, “Chocolate chip is boring. Let’s do something else.”

“Chocolate chip is a classic,” Doyoung automatically refutes. He’s already made chocolate chip cookies before, though, so maybe Yuta’s on to something. “What did you wanna try then?”

Yuta scans the shelves of different ingredients on the walls around them until his eyes land on something. “Matcha?” he suggests.

Doyoung considers it and scans the walls himself. “With white chocolate chunks.” He’s already walking over to the shelf with the white chocolate, taking a block of it for himself. When he returns, Yuta is there with a bag of matcha powder in his arms. They drop their things onto their counter beside the pre-measured dry ingredients. They’ll have to adjust the ratios to account for the matcha, but Doyoung thinks he can handle it. “Line the baking sheets with parchment paper, I’ll start on the dry stuff,” Doyoung instructs.

Yuta listens and tears some of the parchment paper out, plugging in the hand mixer while Doyoung sifts a bunch of the dry ingredients into a bowl. He pushes a couple smaller bowls and an egg towards Yuta. “Can you separate the yolk from the whites?” Doyoung asks.

Yuta shrugs, but he takes the egg anyways. He breaks the yolk on the first try and frowns, his eyebrows creasing as he reaches for another egg to try again. Doyoung watches out of the corner of his eyes, turning on the hand mixer and beating sugar and butter together in a different bowl.

Doyoung lets himself catalogue the man next to him, since they’re going to be working together for the remainder of their time there, and trying to ignore Yuta is more effort than Doyoung thinks is worth it. It’s hard not to look, anyways, when Yuta’s style seems to have changed so much. There are earrings in his earlobes, two on each, but there are more piercings along the shell of his ears that are empty. He’s probably grown since the last time Doyoung saw him in person, but Doyoung has grown more, so he honestly can’t tell. Yuta has more lean muscle now, where Doyoung still has skin and bones. His soft, brown hair almost touches his shoulders, and Yuta keeps huffing out breaths of annoyance every time he tries to tuck the loose strands behind his ears so he can read what’s on the whiteboard.

Doyoung pauses in his mixing and rolls a thin hair-tie off of his wrist, tossing it in Yuta’s direction, who fumbles it in surprise. He still manages to catch it between careful fingers, and he looks up with a question on his face, so Doyoung supplies him with, “I have a niece,” in a curt tone and goes back to swirling the hand mixer in circles to beat the ingredients.

“Gongmyung has a daughter? How old?” Yuta asks in surprise, tying his hair back at the base of his neck.

Doyoung purses his lips and tears his eyes away from Yuta’s hair. “Six. He married someone with a kid. They have a son on the way.” He cracks an egg into the bowl with more force than he needs to. “My niece likes to play with everyone’s hair, so…” His voice trails off. He doesn’t know why he’s telling Yuta any of this. “Add in vanilla extract and the yolk for me,” he says instead.

Yuta doesn’t bring it up again and carefully slides his successfully separated yolk into the bowl. They stand together in silence while Doyoung lets the hand mixer do its thing until it’s all mixed enough. Doyoung eyes the big knife on the counter warily. “Can I trust you to cut the chocolate into chunks?” he asks Yuta doubtfully.

Yuta grabs a cutting board and the knife, laying the chocolate down. “Probably.” He starts cutting into the chocolate with a speed that freaks Doyoung out, so Doyoung steals the knife and the cutting board away from him, cutting the chocolate with proficiency. Yuta just smiles sheepishly and watches the chocolate with his chin in his hand. When Doyoung is finished, he dumps the chocolate pieces into the bowl and lets Yuta fold it into the dough.

They scoop out the dough with spoons and place it on the parchment paper together, not speaking to each other at all. Doyoung just wants to go home and eat these cookies alone in his bedroom.

When Doyoung places the baking sheet into the oven and turns on the timer, the two of them are left with nothing more to do. Standing a foot apart from each other, the silence stretches between them like an ocean.

Doyoung breaks the silence first. “I’ll wash these.” He collects a bunch of the bowls in his arms and heads towards one of the sinks in the back. Yuta joins him a moment later at the sink next to his, washing the hand mixer and utensils that they used.

Even after the two are finished washing the utensils, Yuta doesn’t attempt any conversation. Doyoung slowly starts to feel less like he’s walking on eggshells and more like he’s successfully treading on water when Yuta asks, almost timid, “How are you?”

Doyoung is drowning.

The timer for their oven goes off then, and Doyoung pulls the finished cookies out of the oven swiftly. He separates the cookies evenly into his own container and Yuta’s even though they’re still too hot to be stored. The lid of his container clicks shut, and he places it into his bag before slinging it over his shoulder and turning away from Yuta.

“I’ll see you next week,” he says tersely without looking at Yuta, and he leaves the baking studio with long strides.

🍵 🍵 🍵

Doyoung doesn’t bother with a greeting when he wrenches the door open. “Did you know?” he glowers into the living room, the door still open enough to let the warm air from the heater escape.

Johnny gives him a confused glance from his laptop on the couch, but the look of guilt that flickers over Taeyong’s face is answer enough for Doyoung. He scoffs and slams the door behind him, kicking his shoes off impatiently, like he used to in high school when he was in one of these moods. “Can’t believe this,” he grumbles under his breath, shooting Taeyong a glare of accusation that he knows makes most people shrink.

Taeyong doesn’t cower, though his guilty expression remains. “He asked us not to tell you,” he says as an apology.

It’s not enough to clear the haze in Doyoung’s head. “Hearing it from you would’ve been better than just running into him,” he blames.

“Would it?” Taeyong asks, not unkindly. “I take it you saw him today, then. Where?”

“He was my partner for the baking class,” Doyoung grits through his teeth. He digs the cookies out of his bag and hands them to Johnny.

Taeyong’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry, Doyoung, I didn’t know he’d be there. I would’ve gotten you something else if I knew,” he apologizes with sincerity. Doyoung feels the slightest bit guilty for yelling at him. “You don’t have to go to the rest of them if you don’t want to.”

Doyoung considers it for a moment before shaking his head. “It’s fine. I’ve been wanting to take these classes for a while,” he mumbles. “I’ll put up with Yuta.”

“Yuta? _That_ Yuta?” Johnny asks around a mouthful of matcha cookie.

Doyoung makes a face, but his lips still curl up into a grin. “Yeah, that one,” he grimaces, taking a cookie for himself.

Taeyong takes a bite out of his and hums. “They’re kinda soft, but good. I thought the first class was chocolate chip?” he asks, taking another bite.

Doyoung stares at the cookie and purses his lips. “He wanted matcha,” he mentions under his breath. He bites into the too-soft cookie.

It’s good.

🍵 🍵 🍵

It snows during Doyoung’s walk to the lesson, this time. It’s the harsh kind of snow that comes hand in hand with wind that whips at his nose and cheeks. He had to get used to the snowy winters again after spending his university years in California with Johnny, where the temperature never dropped below freezing and people didn’t even know how to function in the rain. Snow never bothered Doyoung much, and it never sticks around long enough to become a hindrance in Seoul, anyways.

He thinks about how Yuta is probably grumbling to himself and bunched up in a scarf that’s big enough to hide the bottom half of his face. Yuta never grew accustomed to the snowfall in Korea, the painful weather too different from the soft, powdery snow in Osaka that he always used to talk about with such reverence. Doyoung still hasn’t been to Osaka to see it, though he always wanted to. Yuta told him he would take him there after they both graduated university.

Doyoung slows to a stop and blinks for a moment, ignoring the way others brush by him gruffly, before continuing on his way. He doesn’t want to go to Osaka. He doesn’t care.

He turns his music up a few more notches and walks briskly to his lesson.

“Vanilla cake sounds too heavy. Let’s do cinnamon,” Yuta suggests right after the instructor is finished explaining the recipe at the front. His voice is muffled behind his heavy scarf. Doyoung recognizes it, a Christmas present from Taeyong while they were still in high school, which means it’s old. 

Doyoung feels his eye twitch. “This isn’t like cookies, I don’t know how to make a cinnamon cake,” he says. “Take your scarf off. You’re inside now, and it’ll get dirty.”

Yuta shrugs, rummaging around through the drawers at their station with one hand and unwrapping his thick, red scarf with the other. “Well if you’re even half as good at baking cake as you are at—” Doyoung watches him rack his brain for a random example to pull. He doesn’t blame him—it’s been a while. “Uh, playing the flute,” Yuta ends up settling on, “then we should be good.” He makes a small _ah_ sound, pulling the instructor’s cookbook out of one of their drawers and settling it on the counter, flipping through the pages.

Doyoung huffs out a laugh through his nose, trying not to sound bitter. He’s not sure if it works. “I quit playing flute.” It’s out before he can think about it.

Yuta’s hand pauses over the pages, and he doesn’t bother to mask the surprise on his face. His mouth opens and closes, and what ends up coming out is, “Tell me you didn’t quit singing, too.” The words should be scrutinizing, but Yuta’s face has a sort of desperation on it that Doyoung can’t make sense of.

He turns away and his lips make a thin, tight line as he takes the book out from underneath Yuta’s hands. Doyoung doesn’t answer, but not saying anything is as much of an answer to Yuta anyways.

 _“You don’t need to bother with orchestra and choir anymore,”_ his girlfriend at the time had told him in his third year. _“If you drop all of your extra classes now, you’ll still have time to replace them with your major ones. You’ll graduate earlier that way, it’ll save you a year’s worth of tuition.”_ Sejeong always only had Doyoung’s best interests in mind, and Doyoung thought that maybe he had a problem with being obedient in relationships, so he listened and ignored the crack in his heart that formed when he dropped choir to replace it with advanced biochemistry. And she was right, even if the two of them only dated for four months—Doyoung graduated a year early, save for some online summer courses he still had to take, and if his eyes were any hollower because of it, no one said anything.

He ignores the way Yuta is staring at him with an unreadable look and thumbs through the cookbook instead. “There’s a cinnamon cake recipe,” Doyoung points out. “It doesn’t take much longer than the vanilla, so it should be fine. Since when do you care about how heavy a cake is, anyways?” he asks, trying to change the subject so that Yuta will stop looking at him in a way that makes the back of his neck sweat.

Yuta blinks before taking the book from Doyoung and studying the recipe for himself. “I don’t really care, but my roommate will end up complaining,” Yuta says.

“I didn’t know we were making the cake for your roommate.”

“Whether or not we make it for him, he’ll end up eating it anyways. Might as well make it good. Yong will like it too, I bet,” Yuta shrugs, pushing the book to the side. “I’ll get the cinnamon and the brown sugar.” He walks away from their station, unraveled scarf in hand, leaving Doyoung by himself.

Doyoung watches Yuta skirt around the perimeter of the room, picking up ingredients as he does so. His hair looks softer than it did last week, curling out gently at his chin, and he tucks in behind his ear absentmindedly in between tossing his scarf onto his bag and grabbing a bag of brown sugar.

He comes back with an armful of ingredients, reaching one hand into his pocket to pull out a few tangerines that nearly tumble out of his hold. Doyoung catches one before it falls to the ground and raises an eyebrow at Yuta.

“Did you eat this morning?” Yuta asks, tone implying that he already knows the answer. He tugs the hair-tie Doyoung threw at him last week off of his wrist and uses it to messily put his hair into a small ponytail.

Doyoung purses his lips, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of answering, but he shakes his head in confirmation anyways.

“Then that’s for you.” Yuta dumps the rest of the stuff onto the counter ungracefully and starts peeling a tangerine for himself. He pulls the recipe closer to him and reads through it, popping the fruit in his mouth as he does so. “Preheat the oven to 160 degrees,” he says to Doyoung, words slurred around the tangerine.

Doyoung huffs, peeling the fruit quickly and stuffing the whole thing in his mouth, making Yuta snort. He preheats the oven like Yuta told him to with a few quick beeps. “Save the peels,” Doyoung says suddenly. “We can make it a cinnamon-tangerine cake and use shavings from the peel in the batter.”

“Would that change anything about the recipe?” Yuta asks, already mixing together a small bowl of cinnamon and brown sugar.

Doyoung peels another tangerine and eats it one piece at a time, getting ready to cream butter and sugar in a separate bowl. “I don’t know, probably not. We can add the shavings with the butter and sugar after it’s creamed, so can you get started on that?”

Yuta nods and peels their last tangerine, piling up the peels between them.

Fifteen minutes later, their cake is baking in their preheated oven at their station, and silence hangs between them again. Silence bothers Doyoung more than it affects Yuta, so Doyoung knows he’s suffering alone in this, which is why he’s surprised when Yuta speaks first.

“Should we make cream? It’ll be ugly if we don’t cover our cake in something,” he suggests.

Doyoung is fairly certain Yuta doesn’t actually care about how the cake looks or putting cream on the cake, since he was the one who proposed a lighter cake anyways. “No, it has enough flavor as it is. I don’t want to feed Taeyong’s sugar addiction,” he answers.

Yuta smirks teasingly. “I didn’t know we were making the cake for your roommate,” he echoes Doyoung from earlier.

Doyoung kicks at his shin in retaliation, making Yuta yelp in shock. “Did your roommate like the matcha cookies?” he asks. Taeyong inhaled most of the cookies by himself within the first couple days of bringing them home. Doyoung should’ve known that the white chocolate would hook him in.

Yuta squats in front of their oven, keeping his eyes on the cake through the darkened glass. “He said they were ‘too sweet,’ and then he ate all of them in a day. I swear to god he looked like he was going to die, but he still asked me to make them again. You’ll have to help next time, I don’t remember the matcha to flour ratio or anything.”

That sounds suspiciously like an invitation to hangout outside of these baking classes, and Doyoung wonders if Yuta did it purposefully or if it’s not that deep, but he doesn’t dwell on it. “Who’s your roommate?” he asks instead.

“Well, that one’s Kun. He was an international student at Kansai University, I met him in our last year. The other one’s Ten,” Yuta explains.

Doyoung groans automatically at the mention of Ten’s name and wonders if he was cursed to cross paths with Yuta regardless of the baking class they’re sharing. A pang of guilt hits his chest when he realizes that everyone tried so hard to keep Doyoung from seeing Yuta, only for Doyoung to yell at Taeyong about it as soon as he found out. “I know Kun,” Doyoung says, ignoring the guilt. “He came home while Ten was going down on me a few weeks ago, unfortunately for him.”

Yuta loses his balance and lands on the floor as he chokes on air. He stands swiftly and turns to Doyoung with wide eyes. “You and Ten?” he exclaims in disbelief.

Doyoung rolls his eyes at the reaction, though he’s secretly satisfied. “Only sometimes. We all know he’s soft for Kun anyways, so we’ll probably stop fucking around soon.” A beat passes between them. “So you ended up at Kansai?” he asks, remembering what Yuta said earlier. He never planned to get this far with Yuta; in fact, his plan was to get through these baking lessons with as little interaction as possible, but he figures if their lives are already so intertwined with each other’s, he might as well pretend he can get along, act like he’s just catching up with Yuta. 

Yuta pauses like he wasn’t expecting it either. He blinks it away and answers, “Yeah, I transferred there after a couple years at Seoul National. I moved back here a few months ago.” He leans on the counter with false nonchalance that Doyoung can see through. “When did you get back to Korea?” he asks, pretending to examine his fingernails.

“Four years ago. I graduated a year early and moved back here with my roommate. We moved in with Taeyong, been living together since.”

“Johnny, right?” Yuta says. Doyoung nods. “Taeyong talks about him sometimes. He sounds nice.”

Doyoung hums. “Yeah, usually,” he says back vaguely. “Maybe you’ll meet him soon.”

After an hour of back-and-forth small talk, where Doyoung learns Yuta is a junior high school teacher and Yuta ends up learning that Doyoung is trying to get his PHd, their oven dings. Doyoung takes the cake out and lets it rest on the counter for a few minutes this time before dividing it in half and separating it into their respective containers. When the lid of his container clicks shut and he packs it into his bag, he asks, “Is your number still the same?”

Yuta cocks his head to the side, but nods.

Doyoung hands Yuta his half of the cake before he leaves. “Then let me know what Kun and Ten think of this when you get home.”

🍵 🍵 🍵

Johnny is the only one home when Doyoung opens the door, laying on his back on the couch with his laptop settled on his stomach. “How’d it go?” Johnny inquires, apprehension barely making its way through his voice. Doyoung picks up on it anyways.

He digs the cake container out of his bag and sets it on Johnny’s chest, making the other crack a smile. “For you and Taeyong,” he says as an answer. He walks away into his bedroom, closing the door behind him and dropping his things to the floor before flopping onto his bed with the grace of a baby deer.

His phone vibrates in his back pocket, so he lifts his face from his pillow and checks it.

****

**_don’t message (n.y krn #)  
_ ** _[Ten stuffing cake into his mouth and Kun looking disgusted at him.jpg]  
cake seems to be a success _

**_don’t message (n.y krn #)  
_ ** _[Ten looking disgusted and Kun laughing at him.jpg]  
oh he just tasted the tangerine. Kun says it’s good tho and that’s what matters!!!_

Doyoung sends a thumbs up emoji in response and promptly buries his face back into his pillow, groaning until he runs out of breath. He’s saved from having to confront his rapidly beating heart and warm cheeks when his phone buzzes with a phone call from **_gremlin_**.

He answers with a, “What?” in lieu of a greeting and is met with a snort from the other end.

 _“Why’d you gotta go and put fruit in the cake? Are you trying to kill me?”_ Ten complains. Doyoung hears a door click shut on Ten’s end.

“Yes,” Doyoung deadpans into the phone. “Blame Yuta, he brought me tangerines and gave me the idea.”

Ten hums noncommittedly. It’s quiet between them for a moment before Ten speaks up. _“You know, you could’ve called me if you wanted to know what Kun and I thought about the cake instead of having Yuta text you,”_ he says offhandedly. 

The sentence makes Doyoung stiffen on his bed. He doesn’t respond.

Ten sighs, and Doyoung prepares himself to defend from a lecture. Instead, Ten asks, _“Do you know what you’re doing?”_

Doyoung pauses. “No,” he answers truthfully. “Do I have a choice though?” It’s possible that, no matter how hard Doyoung tried, Yuta was always meant to be a part of his life in one way or another. Now that he knew Yuta lived so close and was already so entwined with the rest of his friends, it was more exhausting to avoid him than to accept this. Probably.

 _“Of course you have a choice,”_ Ten says, voice a notch softer than what Doyoung is used to. It makes him shiver with its unfamiliarity _. “Listen, no one would be surprised if you didn’t want anything to do with Yuta, Yuta least of all.”_ Doyoung’s eyes flutter closed. _“So if you don’t want to put in the effort to do whatever it is you think you have to, then that’s fine. We’d get that. Yuta would get it. But if you think you’re ready and willing for him to be there, then that’s okay, too. We just don’t want anything to blow up in your guys’ faces or anything. Don’t want you to be hurt.”_ _Again_ goes unsaid.

Doyoung just wants to nap so badly and not think about any of this. Ten is sounding too sage for the situation at hand. It’s not a big deal. “It’s been a long time. I’ll be fine as long as he is,” he mumbles into the phone. If he keeps telling himself that it’s been long enough, then maybe he’ll believe it.

 _“Okay,”_ Ten murmurs. He doesn’t sound convinced, but Doyoung will show him eventually _. “Anyways, I told you about how Kun wants to celebrate his birthday next week since he was busy a couple weeks ago, right? I figured we could do a joint party for the two of us, since I won’t be in Korea when my actual birthday comes…”_

Doyoung breathes out a sigh that he didn’t know he was holding and listens half-heartedly to Ten ramble, thankful for the change of topic.

Doyoung is twenty-five now. He’s not nineteen. It’s fine. Everything will be fine.

* * *

Yuta never did anything with half of his heart. It was what made him such a good student and an even better friend. Doyoung saw it when he watched Yuta go from groaning over his biology homework to gushing about cell structure within the span of a week. He saw it when Yuta joined choir in his first year of high school even though it interfered with his soccer practice. Doyoung knew Yuta had likely never half-assed anything in his life, and when he wanted something, he went for it with no hesitation. It meant that Yuta was full of surprises, always trying things no one else expected of him, and excelling in everything he put his mind to.

Doyoung always admired his dedication.

“So have you committed to a high school yet?” Yuta asked from Doyoung’s bed. He was unusually tense that day, sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands underneath his thighs, shaking his leg up and down.

He was nervous, Doyoung could tell. He raised an eyebrow at Yuta from his desk and answered, “Yeah, you already know I’ve been wanting to go to SHS, so—”

“Seoul High?” Yuta’s eyes lit up, bright and hopeful. “Then, will you be my boyfriend?”

Doyoung froze in place, eyes wide as he stared at Yuta, searching for a sign on his face that he was joking. When he couldn’t find anything but expectant sincerity, he felt his face heat up. “H-huh?” he sputtered. “What is this about?” he chuckled nervously.

Yuta smiled at him, tender and genuine, and Doyoung felt his heart skip a beat. “I like you,” Yuta answered easily, like it was obvious. “And we’re gonna be at the same high school, so I want you to be my boyfriend.”

Doyoung’s eyes narrowed. “What if I had chosen a different high school?” he asked, uncertain, still in a bit of disbelief over the conversation.

Yuta pulled his legs up onto the bed and crossed them, leaning his elbows down on his thighs. “I still would’ve asked. But I didn’t want to influence your decision or stress you out by asking before you decided.” He squirmed in place a bit, and Doyoung could see him bite the inside of his cheek, anticipating an answer.

Doyoung still wanted answers of his own, though. “H-how long? Have you, uh, liked me?” he asked, eyes darting around, cheeks flaming impossibly hot. He’d gotten confessed to before, but this was Yuta, his best friend. It felt different compared to the other times.

Yuta’s expression turned thoughtful. “A while, probably. It was like, two months into the school year when Taeyong got annoyed at me for not realizing it, though.”

Two months into the school year— “You waited six months to ask me to be your boyfriend?” Doyoung gawked, astonished. Yuta waiting that long to do anything was unheard of.

Yuta nodded. “I know you were already pretty set on going to SHS, but I didn’t want you to go there for me. Or avoid it in case you actually hate me, or something.” He bit his bottom lip. “Do you actually hate me or something?” he asked, nervousness beginning to make itself known on Yuta’s face.

It was unfair, really. Doyoung was already in love before he even knew what that was.

He smirked at Yuta and leapt up to tackle him backwards onto the bed. Yuta’s hands automatically flew up to Doyoung’s chest to push him to the side and get the upper hand, but Doyoung knew him too well and saw it coming. He took Yuta’s hands and pinned them to either side of Yuta’s head, watching with satisfaction as a flush appeared high on Yuta’s cheeks.

Yuta may have had a will of iron, but Doyoung could match that.

He grinned down, hovering over Yuta’s red face, and told him, “Yes, I’ll be your boyfriend, stupid,” before leaning down and kissing Yuta square on the mouth.

At fourteen years old, Doyoung had his first boyfriend and his first kiss.

The years following could only be described by Doyoung as blissful. Perfect, even.

Yes, they had their arguments every now and then, but that was nothing new. The two of them already knew how to navigate their disagreements before they were dating, since it happened so often. Now, apologies came in the form of kisses on the nose and their heads on each other’s shoulders while they watched a movie they’d already seen a hundred times before and talked it out while the movie droned on. Doyoung developed a love-hate relationship with _Tangled._

Simply, Doyoung loved Yuta, and Yuta loved Doyoung. Doyoung was Yuta’s, and Yuta was Doyoung’s, and even though it was Doyoung’s first relationship, he didn’t want anything else. He never even thought of it.

Yuta, who Doyoung had looked up to for so long, was _his._ He didn’t need anything else.

* * *

“Why’s the birthday party here?” Doyoung asks from the armchair, not looking up from his laptop. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for it to be at Kun and Ten’s place?”

“I didn’t want Kun to be obligated to clean his own house afterwards. He’s one of the birthday boys. He shouldn’t have to worry about that kind of thing, and if it’s at his place, you know he will,” Taeyong answers around a mouthful of cinnamon-tangerine cake. “The tangerine was a good call.”

Doyoung hums in thanks, continuing to type on his laptop before it starts dinging with incoming texts. 

**_yuta krn #  
_ ** _[empty container.jpg]  
Kun strikes again  
  
 **yuta krn #  
** since he liked the cake so much, do you think we should make it again for the party this saturday?_

Doyoung doesn’t take his narrowed eyes off of the word “we” even as he types his response. 

**_me  
_ ** _didn’t Ten hate it though? It’s his bday too lol **  
**we’re making cake pops that day for class, so we can just bring those_

 **_yuta krn #  
_ ** _good call :3  
see you sat!!_

Doyoung closes the messaging app on his laptop. “Yuta is coming?” he asks the room.

“To the party? Yeah,” Taeyong answers from the far end of the couch. Apologetic guilt graces his expression. “Sorry, I should’ve asked you first, Ten just said…”

“I don’t mind,” Doyoung says, stopping Taeyong from explaining himself. He looks back down at the article he was reviewing, but his eyes aren’t focused on the words anymore.

“You sure?” Johnny asks. He sits on the end of the couch closest to Doyoung, and he reaches out a reassuring hand to hold Doyoung’s knee. “You and I can go out and do something else if you don’t wanna be around,” he offers.

Doyoung huffs out a laugh. “Ten would kill me if you weren’t at his birthday party. And I’ll be fine. It’s just a party. Besides, you can meet Yuta this way, I think you would get along with him.”

Johnny purses his lips and nods, squeezing Doyoung’s knee before he pulls away. 

🍵 🍵 🍵

“Dammit,” Doyoung grumbles after his fourth attempt to shape the cake dough into a ball. He keeps pressing too hard or making ugly dents into the dough, and it’s starting to frustrate him. He wants these to look good for Kun and Ten later at the party, but it’s taking him too long to smooth out the dents he keeps creating. At the rate he’s going, they won’t be able to make as many as they want for tonight.

It must show on his face because Yuta says, “Don’t worry about it, I can do the rest.” Then there’s the feeling of a hand in between his shoulder blades, at the bottom of his neck, soft and soothing. Doyoung’s whole body relaxes under the touch, and he sighs out a breath through his nose. Before he can think about it, the hand is gone, back to deftly shaping the cake doughs into the perfect size and shape.

Doyoung watches him continue to work, wondering if Yuta even knows what he just did.

* * *

Years of dwelling has gotten Doyoung nowhere, but he still thinks that he should have somehow seen it coming. Surely there must have been signs leading up to it that he missed because he was too blindly in love, or too stupid, or too gullible because Yuta was his first everything and Doyoung didn’t have a clue about anything else.

But no matter how hard he looks for a reason, for signs, there was only a phone call in Doyoung’s sophomore year of university.

It was late in California, so it must have been evening for Yuta in Korea. It didn’t matter to Doyoung, who would have spent as long as he could pleading in every way he knew how once he heard the words, _“Let’s break up,”_ from Yuta over the phone. 

“Let’s work it out, talk about it.” Doyoung tries to catch a sob from escaping his throat, but it still comes out as a hiccup. It’s useless anyways, since there are hot tears already rolling down his face that he doesn’t bother to wipe away. His throat hurts from how long he’s been crying. Some distant, rational part of his brain is relieved that Johnny isn’t in their room to see him like this, but the rest of him is only focused on getting Yuta to listen to him. “Don’t you love me?” he whispers wetly, his desperate last ditch attempt to get Yuta to reconsider.

There’s silence from the other side of the line for a few moments, enough time for Doyoung to open his mouth to speak again before Yuta answers. _“I thought I did.”_ His voice crackles on the phone with how softly he says it.

It rings in Doyoung’s ears for weeks, months afterwards. It echoes in every one of Doyoung’s failed relationships that follow, a ghost in Doyoung’s shadow making him question everything.

 _I thought I did._

* * *

Seeing Yuta in his space is decidedly weird.

There are plenty of years that Yuta hasn’t touched in Doyoung’s life, at least not directly. After that phone call, Doyoung didn’t see or talk to Yuta once. He graduated university in California without Yuta, moved back to Korea without Yuta, applied and got into grad school without Yuta. There are parts of his life that passed and simply _were_ without Yuta having existed in them. This apartment he shares with Johnny and Taeyong was one of them.

Now, Doyoung watches as Yuta stands in his kitchen, delicately sticking their matcha cake pops into styrofoam blocks that they bought together earlier from Daiso. The cake pops look smooth and cute, thanks to Yuta, and taste great according to Taeyong, who’s been busying himself with trying to clean the apartment while simultaneously making Ten and Kun’s favorite foods for dinner. Yuta arrived an hour earlier than everyone else to help assemble the cake pops, so Doyoung left him to it as he did everything else that Taeyong asked him to do.

The sound of the door opening alerts Doyoung to Johnny’s return from the grocery store. He opens his mouth to greet him so he can introduce him to Yuta, but he’s cut off when he hears Johnny speaking on the phone.

“Jaehyun, relax, it’s no big deal. We’re at my place now, we’ll just hangout until you can swing by and pick him up, okay? It’s totally fine. I’ll see you soon.” Doyoung lifts in eyebrow in confusion at the words, so he turns towards the front door to ask about it, but he pauses.

In Johnny’s left hand are grocery bags filled with booze. In his right is the hand of a small child who’s busy sucking on a lollipop. It’s strawberry flavored if the stained color of his lips are anything to go by.

Doyoung waves at the kid, and the kid looks up at him and waves back, keeping the lollipop in his mouth. “Who’s this?” Doyoung asks Johnny as the door closes shut behind the two.

Johnny hands Doyoung the grocery bags and leads the child further into the room, letting go of his hand. “One of my students, Jisung. I found him without his dad at the grocery store, so I called his dad and we figured we could just keep an eye on him here until he can come pick him up.”

Jisung raises his arms, so Doyoung squats down to lift him on instinct. He carries Jisung on his hip with his free arm. “He’s pretty calm,” he points out. “How’d his dad lose him?”

“Jisung likes to wander off, it happens at the kindergarten all the time,” Johnny explains, watching the two fondly. “He’s pretty spacey. He never knows how much he misses his dad until he sees him again, so he’ll probably start crying when Jaehyun drops by.”

Doyoung hums in thought and carries Jisung into the kitchen with the bags of booze. “Yuta,” he calls once he’s closer to the kitchen. “Behold, a child,” he says, presenting Jisung to Yuta, remembering how much the other likes children.

Sure enough, Yuta’s eyes light up when he sees Jisung. He and Jisung reach for each other at the same time, so Doyoung shifts Jisung out of his arm into Yuta’s, opening the fridge to refrigerate the drinks. “Johnny, this is Yuta. Yuta, Johnny. Make nice,” he says offhandedly over his shoulder.

He hears them make small talk behind him, Jisung interjecting with semi-relevant facts about himself and his dad every so often, making the three of them laugh. Taeyong is still running about, stopping occasionally to coo at Jisung and pinch his cheeks before going back to preparing.

Eventually, Jaehyun arrives at their apartment with frantic eyes that immediately soften when they land on Jisung, who’s watching TV on their couch. Jisung, as Johnny expected, bursts into tears when Jaehyun calls his name, scrambling to run into his arms. Jaehyun is similarly a mess of apologies and _thank you_ ’s, but Johnny only smiles and gently herds the two out of the apartment and to Jaehyun’s car.

When the apartment is quiet again, Yuta turns to Doyoung. “You’re good with kids,” he comments. _Better than you used to be,_ his tone implies.

Doyoung shrugs and returns to the kitchen. One of the cake pops is missing from the arrangement since they gave one to Jisung, but Doyoung figures Kun won’t mind. Ten might, but Doyoung cares a lot less about what Ten thinks. “I have a niece,” he offers as an explanation to Yuta.

“Oh, right,” Yuta says. His eyes drift down to where Doyoung’s hair-tie is wrapped around his wrist. “Right,” he repeats.

Doyoung knows they’re both being reminded of the years they spent apart. Years and places that Doyoung experienced without Yuta filling in the cracks where his laughter normally would have been.

Doyoung is twenty-five now, and Yuta is standing in his kitchen, looking like he belongs.

He swallows down the lump in his throat when he realizes Yuta doesn’t just look like he belongs. It feels like he belongs, too.

Doyoung has a tendency to be the one who initiates clinging after he’s had enough drinks, and Johnny has always been there to indulge him. Tonight is no exception, as Doyoung finds himself climbing onto the couch where Johnny is sitting and having a conversation with Kun. Johnny doesn’t hesitate to let Doyoung crawl into his side to snuggle up, easily lifting his arm so Doyoung can fit himself securely in Johnny’s warmth.

It’s easy to make himself small when it comes to Johnny, since he’s the tallest and sturdiest person that Doyoung knows, so he makes himself comfortable, like Johnny’s side is his second home. Johnny lets him, not missing a beat in his conversation with Kun. After a few moments where Kun excuses himself to get some water, Johnny leans his head down to brush his lips against the shell of Doyoung’s ear.

“Everything okay?” His breath is warm against Doyoung’s ear, and he shivers.

Doyoung burrows himself further into Johnny. “Yeah, just…” He chances a glance in Yuta’s general direction and catches the sight of him laughing full-heartedly at whatever Sicheng just said to him. His apartment is filled with their friends, and even with all of the years that kept them apart, Doyoung can still pick out Yuta’s laugh in a crowd. There’s a deep ache in his chest, and he swallows. “It’s just harder than I thought it would be,” he mumbles into Johnny’s shirt, shame in his tone. Johnny warned him beforehand, given him an out, and Doyoung refused, thinking he was strong enough, and yet—

“That’s fine. Do you want to go to sleep then?” Johnny asks gently, without a hint of judgement.

Doyoung sighs in relief. He looks up and gives Johnny the best pleading eyes that he can. “Carry me?” he asks teasingly.

He asked as a joke, and he’s expecting Johnny to make a quip about how he’s not drunk enough to ask for that, so he yelps in surprise when Johnny actually does lift him from the couch. He wraps his legs around Johnny’s torso automatically and clings, burying his face in Johnny’s neck to feign sleep so that he doesn’t have to face any stares from anyone else in the apartment even if most of them wouldn’t think twice about it.

With his face against Johnny’s neck, Doyoung misses the blank glare that Johnny sends Yuta’s way before he carries Doyoung to his bedroom. 

* * *

Doyoung has had a lot of time to think about what went wrong, but it never occurred to him that maybe it was a mistake to be so prideful, to be too proud about the fact that he was the one Yuta had chosen for all those years. Yuta who was steadfast and determined and bright, who had everyone’s eyes on him at all times, the one who still picked Doyoung for five years.

He was angry when Yuta called him that night six years ago and forced him to rethink everything he thought he knew about the two of them. Doyoung found his head in a toilet bowl for at least the next two weeks after that, laying his head on the coolness of the porcelain with empty bottles still clutched in his hand, telling Johnny in a raspy, slurring voice, “The motherfucker wasted five years of my time,” but maybe that wasn’t it.

Maybe the way Yuta broke up with him dashed his pride and he didn’t know how else to react other than to be angry.

Maybe Doyoung didn’t know who he was if he wasn’t Yuta’s.

* * *

Yuta comes over more frequently after that, and the two of them make repeats of their baked goods for their friends because, “Kun liked the tangerine cake so much, and Ten likes all the matcha stuff, and I don’t know how to make any of it by myself,” according to Yuta. Doyoung lets it all happen, making frosting for their cakes just to please Taeyong, and switching it up sometimes, making honey and lemon flavored cake for Sicheng and Taeil, strawberry for Jaehyun and Jisung per Johnny’s request.

Yuta molds himself into places in his life Doyoung had forgotten were there, and he lets him, all the while ignoring the simmering ache in his bones whenever Yuta laughs in his kitchen with flour on his nose.

🍵 🍵 🍵

Their last baking class is macarons.

“Let’s just keep the matcha train rolling,” Yuta suggests behind his red scarf.

Doyoung unravels it for him, taking in the flush on Yuta’s cheeks from the warmth. It’s not that Doyoung doesn’t want to do matcha flavored macarons, but he’s nothing if not difficult, and he feels that familiar tug on the tip of his tongue.

“We’ve already done matcha twice. I want to try something lavender flavored,” he retorts. He neatly folds Yuta’s scarf and deposits it on top of his bag. “I bet lavender would be better than matcha, anyways.”

“Oh really?” Yuta drawls, a smile in his eyes before it’s on his lips. Just like that, a challenge emerges between them, and Doyoung’s pulse thrums at the prospect of a competition. “We could make our own batches, then. Have our friends judge them, see which ones are really better.” There’s a glint in Yuta’s eyes when he looks up at Doyoung that reminds him of every reason Yuta was perfect for him that he’s tried to push away.

He feels the beginning of a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips despite himself. “May the best macarons win,” he replies.

Yuta beams back at him. “Don’t get your feelings hurt when mine turn out better.” He sticks out his tongue to taunt Doyoung, making him laugh.

“Please, we both know I’m the better baker between the two of us,” he says in between chuckles. When he looks back at Yuta, he finds him staring back with wide eyes.

Doyoung’s heart beats in his ears. “What?” he asks, wrist automatically moving to cover his mouth and shield his grin.

Yuta’s hand is on his wrist immediately, gently moving it back down. “Don’t do that,” he admonishes softly.

Doyoung stares at Yuta long after the other has looked away and doesn’t remember to listen to the instructor for the remaining time there.

🍵 🍵 🍵

****

**_You created a new group chat!  
(yuta krn #, teewhy, youngho hyung, gremlin, kun, winwin, taeillie)  
You changed the group name to “yuta v. doyoung macaron throwdown”_ **

**_teewhy  
_ ** _?? what goes on  
doyoung why did u make this _

**_yuta krn #  
_ ** _LISTEN UP NERDS, here’s the deal: u all have 24 hours to taste the matcha and lavender macarons me and dy are bringing home today and tell us which one is better. say it in this gc so we can tally up the score_

 **_winwin  
_ ** _doyoung’s are better_

 **_yuta krn #  
_ ** _we haven’t even given them to u and taeil yet ??_

 **_winwin  
_ ** _I don’t have to taste them to know, I trust doyoung more_

 **_me  
_ ** _lol first point goes to me_

 **_yuta krn #  
_ ** _NO IT DOESN’T!!! SICHENG, PLAY BY THE RULES OR I’LL BE SAD :(_

 **_taeillie  
_ ** _lol_

 **_gremlin  
_ ** _if this competition is a metaphor for smth else, i would like to be excluded from this narrative_

 **_youngho hyung  
_ ** _ten_

 **_teewhy  
_ ** _ten_

 **_taeillie  
_ ** _ten_

 **_kun  
_ ** _ten._

 **_winwin  
_ ** _ten_

 **_gremlin  
_ ** _eleven_

**_You have removed gremlin from the chat._ **

****

🍵 🍵 🍵

Yuta shows up at Doyoung’s doorstep the next day, a dejected expression on his face.

“A tie is such bullshit,” he grumbles after settling on their couch.

Doyoung sinks into his armchair. “Actually, I had a secret tie-breaker person, just in case,” he admits. Yuta perks up on the couch. “Johnny brought the macarons to Jaehyun’s and texted me what he thought earlier.”

“And?” Yuta asks expectantly.

Doyoung pulls out his phone and thumbs through his text thread with Johnny. “Well, Jaehyun couldn’t decide for the life of him, but Jisung sure had some notes,” he says with a glint in his eye. He points his screen towards Yuta for him to read, and Yuta grabs his phone, reading enthusiastically.

**_youngho hyung  
_ ** _Jisung said the matcha was too bitter and the lavender tasted like soap_

 **_me  
_ ** _SOAP????  
ok whatever, but which did he like more_

**_youngho hyung  
_ ** _he said, and I quote, “the green one is too green. The purple one is prettier. Purple wins”_   
_and Jaehyun said “just because it’s pretty???”_   
_Jisung said “green is like cabbage and broccoli, purple isn’t. Purple wins”_

By the time Yuta looks up in shock from the screen, Doyoung is already wearing a victory smirk. He snatches his phone back, gloating, “I knew choosing purple and white would pay off. Ah, sweet victory.” He sighs contentedly, leaning back in the armchair and relishing in the satisfying feeling of a fairly won competition.

Yuta scoffs, but grins. “Fine, fine, it’s your win. I’ll have to do better next time.” Doyoung’s ears perk up in excitement at that, and he giggles. Yuta lets him bask in his win for a moment longer before asking, “So Johnny and Jaehyun?”

“Ah, maybe,” Doyoung says thoughtfully. “I don’t know, I’ve never seen Johnny interested in anyone since I’ve known him, but he’s spending a lot of time with Jaehyun lately. He also really loves Jisung.”

Yuta hums in understanding. “I just thought…” He shakes his head. “Nevermind,” he mumbles, almost to himself.

Doyoung cocks his head to the side. “You thought?” he presses.

“I thought…” Yuta chews on the inside of his cheek and avoids eye contact. “You and Johnny,” he finishes, shrugging.

Doyoung’s eyebrows furrow further in confusion. “Huh? No,” he denies, shaking his head.

Yuta nods. “Then, anyone else?” When Doyoung’s confused expression remains, Yuta says, “I mean, are you seeing anyone else in that case?”

Doyoung blinks, wondering if this conversation is really happening. “No,” he answers, too dumbfounded to lie or change the subject.

Yuta pulls his knees up to his chest, like he’s trying to protect himself. “Then how many?” he asks, his voice nearly a whisper.

Doyoung knows exactly what he’s asking, and his expression falls flat. If Yuta wants to know, then he’ll tell him.

“Six,” Doyoung answers hollowly. Yuta’s flinch is barely visible, but Doyoung notices. “Six relationships since you. Two of them thought we’d be better off as friends, and they were right. They’re still my friends.” Sejeong and Jinyoung will always have their own places in Doyoung’s heart as good relationships. He cares for them dearly. “One was more into me than I was into them, so they ended it before they got hurt.” He used to dwell on Jisoo’s face as she turned his back on him for the last time and question to himself if she thought it was worth it. “The rest of them called me neurotic at some point.” When Doyoung’s mind drifts, it always drifts to wondering if it’s his fault, somehow, that he likes rectangle crackers instead of square ones because those are the ones his grandmother used to feed him, or if it’s his fault that the kitchen counter has to be clean because his father would throw a fit whenever it wasn’t. 

Yuta never called him neurotic.

The muscles in his jaw tighten. “What about you?” he asks Yuta, even though he’s fairly certain he doesn’t want to know. He figures he might as well ask now, get these nagging curiosities out of his system before they fester further down the line.

The telltale signs of a lie appear on Yuta’s face in the way his eyes flit over his shoulder. “I know when you’re lying, Yuta,” he says, not giving Yuta the chance to answer.

Yuta’s mouth snaps shut and he draws his legs closer to his chest. “None,” he murmurs into his knees. “None that were serious, anyways.”

Any thoughts that Doyoung had earlier cease at the answer. “None?” he echoes incredulously, because it doesn’t make sense—Yuta is Yuta, impossible not to draw others in, easy to love. “Why?” The question tumbles out of his mouth in his disbelief.

Yuta’s posture deflates, his expression resigned, like this situation was an inevitability that he was still scared of facing. “I wasn’t interested,” he answers honestly. “I didn’t see the point, not when…” He trails off, chewing on his bottom lip. He tenses up.

He’s nervous.

“When?” Doyoung prompts, raising an eyebrow.

Yuta lets out a breath to steady himself, but it comes out shaky. “Not when anybody else wasn’t you,” he finally finishes.

Everything comes to a halt around Doyoung. The only thing he sees is Yuta, small on his couch, and the only thing he hears is a ringing in his head.

Nothing was making sense to him anymore, and he realizes belatedly that he’s been holding his breath since Yuta spoke. He takes a shallow breath in and out, and wonders how Yuta could possibly be telling the truth right now when the words _I thought I did_ have been hiding in every corner of his mind since he was nineteen.

And a thought crosses Doyoung’s mind, something he’s _never_ considered before—

“Look at me.” He waits until Yuta listens, and Doyoung looks him right in the eye. “Tell me you never really loved me.”

He watches in awe as Yuta flinches back with his entire body, like the demand physically pushed him away, but it’s not enough for Doyoung yet. There’s an insistent knot in his throat that needs Yuta to say it. He waits for painfully long moments where it feels like the air is being sucked right out of his lungs, waits until he’s dizzy, but Yuta stays silent. His gaze wavers to the wall behind Doyoung’s shoulder. Doyoung leans forward and grips the armrests of the chair with white knuckles.

“Look at me!” Doyoung snaps loudly. “ _Say_ it!” he yells.

Doyoung has risen his voice plenty of times against Taeyong, Johnny, his past partners. He’s always known he was quick to anger, easy to frustrate, and even though it’s something he’s worked hard to control, that doesn’t change that he’s shouted at others in the past.

But he’s never once risen his voice at Yuta; not when Doyoung was twelve and they were just getting to know each other, not when Doyoung was fifteen and learning all of the things about Yuta as a boyfriend that annoyed him to pieces, not when Yuta called him that night and broke him into pieces from across the world. Doyoung has pestered him, teased, whispered, begged, but he’s never yelled at him or tried to intimidate him.

Yuta bites his lip and stays quiet.

“Say it!” Doyoung cries out, loudly, intense, with the tone of a command that he knows is just enough to rile Yuta up and get him to respond.

Sure enough, Yuta looks back at him, face contorted like he’s in anguish as he screams, “I can’t!”

The words freeze Doyoung to his core.

“I can’t, I fucking can’t tell you that I never loved you,” Yuta continues, voice bordering on a desperation that Doyoung’s never heard from him before. Doyoung doesn’t know how to breathe, and Yuta keeps talking, his feet hitting the floor as he leans forward. “I’ve loved you since we were fourteen, I loved you even when I told you I didn’t, I loved you for years afterwards,” he admits, voice hoarse.

By the end of it, Yuta’s chest is heaving, and his eyes are alight with frustration that Doyoung can’t be sure is directed at him. He’s never yelled at Doyoung before either.

Doyoung doesn’t let Yuta forget that he gave him the answer to a question he never expressed but they both knew Doyoung was asking. “You’re saying that you lied?” His own voice sounds far away. The one time Doyoung wasn’t able to catch Yuta lying—the only time he believed Yuta when he should have pressed harder.

Yuta looks at the floor with an expression resembling shame. “Of course I lied,” he mumbles, quiet, acquiescent. His bottom lip wobbles, and he sucks it between his teeth harshly.

Doyoung has seen Yuta cry more times than he can count because Yuta is the type of person to cry at anything remotely sad in a movie. Every time, he had the urge to pull Yuta against his chest and stroke the back of his head, maybe wrap his arms around him to protect him from the world. But Yuta never needed protecting—he was always the one taking the world head on. He didn’t need any protection. Doyoung always settled for holding his hand or placing his head on his shoulder instead.

Now, though, he’s not sure what to do when it feels like there’s an ocean between the two of them that he’s been drowning in for years and years.

What he does know is that he still needs answers.

“Why would you lie?” he wrenches out in a breath. “You knew, you knew I loved you.” His chest twists in agony at the confession. He hasn’t thought about how much he loved Yuta in a long time.

“It’s because you loved me that I lied,” Yuta whispers. “You wouldn’t be able to stop loving me unless I said something that made you _hate_ me.”

“Why would you ever want me to hate you? If you loved me, then why—”

Yuta lets out a breathy, humorless laugh, collapsing back into the couch. A tear escapes and makes its way down his cheek. “You loved me. You loved me so much, you never saw the way other people looked at you.” Yuta looks away and brings a hand up to wipe his wet face. “ _Everyone_ wanted you, people who were better than me wanted you. And then you moved to California for university, and god knows how many people there would’ve been better for you than someone like me, who couldn’t measure up to everyone else who wanted you.” Tears keep making their way down Yuta’s face and onto his shirt, and he keeps uselessly trying to wipe them away. “You couldn’t see it, and you never would have if I kept you to myself. So I lied to get you to hate me, so you could finally see you deserved better.”

Doyoung stares at him, lips parted in shock. In all his years of knowing Yuta, he had never known Yuta to show a single ounce of insecurity, save for him whining about the occasional zit that would appear on his otherwise clear skin. When Doyoung was with Yuta, “better” was not an option because Yuta couldn’t be beat. Yuta was the person Doyoung not only loved, but aspired to be.

Confident, unwavering, passionate.

Wasn’t he?

Doyoung never noticed the glaring self-doubt that devoured Yuta from the inside, the insecurity that caused Yuta to convince himself that lying to Doyoung an ocean away was better than letting Doyoung continue loving him. He was too busy worshipping the traits about Yuta that he adored to see that Yuta was hurting at all.

A tear of his own rolls down Doyoung’s cheek. Is he supposed to feel grateful for the years he spent trying to find love from people who couldn’t give it to him in the same way Yuta had? Is he supposed to be grateful for the amount of time he spent in relationships with people who told him he was crazy, and thinking that was supposed to be love? Grateful that Yuta supposedly took mercy on him by allowing him to find someone “better”?

He leaves his chair to stand in front of Yuta, looking down at him. Yuta is still using his sleeve to try and dry his face. His legs are pulled back up to his chest, and he looks smaller than Doyoung has ever remembered seeing him.

Doyoung wonders how he could have missed it all, seeing Yuta in front of him now.

He reaches down and cups Yuta’s face in his hand, and Yuta leans into it automatically, melting into the touch like his body hasn’t released any tension in years.

“I never meant to fuck it all up so bad,” Yuta whispers, his voice shivering. “Trust me, I’ve heard enough from Taeyong and Taeil about how badly I fucked up, but I thought I would never have a chance to make things better.” He sniffs and tries to push his face away from Doyoung’s touch, but Doyoung catches his jaw with his thumb, holding him in place.

He leans down, closer to Yuta, and Yuta watches him with curious, wet eyes. “And how do you feel now?”

Yuta sniffs again. “About?”

Doyoung shrugs. “Everything.”

Yuta’s bottom lip juts out in thought even as another tear escapes. “Kind of relieved. Really sorry. Not sure how else to proceed.” He looks Doyoung in the eye somewhat bashfully. “Still in love with you, I think. I know it’s been a long time, but… no one else was you. I just stopped trying.” He blushes at the end of it, looking uncannily like when Doyoung was fourteen and Yuta was sitting on his bed, asking him out for the first time.

Doyoung understands the feeling of searching for someone in somebody else and coming up empty every time.

He leans closer until his face is a breath’s away from Yuta’s. His eyes are wide and imploring, and when Doyoung gives him time to back away, Yuta’s response is for his wide eyes to flutter closed. Doyoung breathes out in exasperation and leads Yuta’s face towards his own with his hand, closing the years and oceans between them.

Kissing Yuta is something that Doyoung had forgotten, but a feeling that he’s looked for in every relationship, in every kiss. Kissing Yuta when Doyoung is twenty-five is like the quiet of the storm and the answer to his questions. Yuta’s lips are soft and plush against his own, and he kisses back with the pressure and the gentleness that only Yuta was ever able to know Doyoung needed.

Doyoung pulls away, keeping himself close as he brings up his free hand to flick Yuta on the forehead.

Yuta yelps and winces, rubbing the inflicted spot in pain. “That was for lying,” Doyoung explains with a monotone voice. He reaches up to flick Yuta again. “That was for ignoring me when I told you we should talk it out.” Another six flicks in rapid succession that Yuta resigns himself to, eye twitching with each one. “Those were for every year spent trying to get over you.” Yuta looks up, squinting his eyes in preparation for more, but Doyoung only sighs and straightens up.

“Look,” Doyoung starts. “I’m not going to pretend everything’s just fine, now. You lied, and that led to a lot of bullshit, and I’m pissed.” Yuta looks down, ashamed, and nods. “I’ve spent the worse part of the past few years thinking that love means being treated like shit because if what you showed me wasn’t love, then what was? That’s been hard, really fucking hard,” Doyoung admits, trying not to choke on his own words. “But I’m—I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. Yuta’s head snaps up in surprise. “You lied, but the way I viewed you made you feel like you had to. I’m sorry for not noticing that you were hurting before.” He takes a deep breath and holds out his hand for Yuta to take. “Whatever happens now, we can only go forward, right?” he tries. Doyoung shifts in place, offering Yuta an apologetic grin. “What I’m saying is, I’d like to get to know you—really know you, including what makes you feel like shit and why you insist on making all of our baked goods matcha flavored.”

Doyoung’s hand remains outstretched in front of Yuta when he’s done, and Yuta offers him a bright smile, wet with tears, but a smile all the same. “Okay,” he agrees, wiping his face one last time. He takes Doyoung’s hand in his, letting Doyoung pull him up onto his feet.

“I’d like that.” 

🍵 🍵 🍵

Doyoung cackles at his boyfriend’s antics in the café, the ugly one that he usually covers up with his sleeve when he remembers to. But he’s with Yuta, and it’s comfortable, and he doesn’t think about how wide his mouth must be. Instead, he lifts a finger to catch a stray tear from his eye from how hard he laughs.

When he’s settled himself down to breathless giggles, he finds Yuta staring at him with a small, thoughtful smile on his lips. Doyoung tilts his head at his expression and says, “What?” He takes a sip of his water to hide himself from the rapt attention.

Yuta only shakes his head and smiles wider, leaning forward with his cheek in his hand. “It’s just—I feel bad for you.”

Doyoung is taken aback with confusion. “Why?” he asks. 

The affection in Yuta’s eyes don’t let up. “You’ll never get to see how beautiful you are when you laugh.”

Doyoung can only cover his blush with his sleeve while Yuta protests, warmth spreading to the apples of his cheeks and a lovesick grin taking over his face.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for making it this far and reading my fic! would love to read anyone's thoughts/comments about this in the comments or my cc. pls leave comments/kudos as it makes my day <3 
> 
> ps, anyone catch the [冬の匂いだ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17838869) ref from my first doyu? comment if u found it hehe 
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/mochibbh) // [cc](https://curiouscat.me/mochibbh0201)


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